Karachi, the largest city of Pakistan, is at the bottom of the quality of life index of the world cities.
According to the Quality of Life Index 2016, Karachi is at the 202nd position on the list of 230 countries. Even the ranking of Lahore (199) and Islamabad (193) is better than Karachi. The Indian cities of Hyderabad, Pune, Bengaluru, Chennai, Mumbai, Kolkata and New Delhi are better than Karachi or even Islamabad and Lahore, concerning the quality of life.
The top five slots of this coveted list are bagged by Vienna (Austria), Zurich (Switzerland), Auckland (New Zealand), Munich (Germany)and Vancouver (Canada).
Why the quality of life in Karachi is far worse even as compared to Mumbai, Kolkata or Lahore shows the least priorities of the Sindh rulers to improve the living condition of the city, which is the capital of Sindh province. In fact, the Sindh province is marred with corruption, bad governance and murder of merit which are fully reflected by pathetic living conditions of Karachi.
The city has the poorest public transport system in the world where people travel on makeshift Chingchi rickshaws or the rooftops of overloaded minibuses. The provincial government and the Pakistan Railways (PR) have even failed to repair their decades-old surface rail-based public transport system – Karachi Circular Railway (KCR).
The government schools and colleges in the city face shortage of competent teachers, laboratories and equipment. The education department of Sindh is notorious of recruiting thousands of fake teachers and is one of the most corrupt departments of Sindh.
Karachi is also called Kachra-chi (a city of garbage) as tons of garbage are simply not collected and left strewn in street to rot. Many areas of the city face the problems of overflowing gutters. Sadly, both the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) and the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board (KWSB) are overstaffed due to the political-based wholesale appointments in these institutions by the nexus of the then ruling parties Pakistan Peoples’ Party and Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM). But despite this extra manpower, the performance of the KMC and KWSB is dismally disappointing. There parent department, Sindh local government department, is dubbed by the opposition parties as the mother of corruption.
The government-run hospitals of the city lack medicines and proper number of doctors and paramedics. There administrations are politically motivated and their main aim and object is to keep their political bosses happy than to serve the patients and focus on healthcare delivery.
A large number of people were ‘recruited’ as city wardens when a coalition government of PPP and MQM was in power. However, the city wardens are not generally seen serving on the city roads, complain the Karachiites.
These civic issues are responsible for dismally poor living standards of Karachi and they are a blemish on the face of their administration. They contribute to the perception of very poor governance of Karachi city as well as Sindh province.
The political stakeholders, policymakers and administrative bosses of Karachi need to take a very serious notice of why Karachi is at the bottom of the quality of life index of the world cities. They should also chalk out a serious plan to improve the living condition of this port city which is called the hub of Pakistani economy and implement them strictly above political and party considerations.
A dismal and disgraceful picture but I am sure none is going to either read this report or bother. So shameful has become our Governments and society. Billions earned in the name of taxes but apparenetly spent somewhere else. waiting for a natural disaster like Tsunami or Earth quake.
ye international sazish he bhaion ppp k khelaf , bhuto aj b zinda aur hamare qurbanya he pore tareekh me , establishment k khelaf srf hum khare hoi he , jye jye bhuto ,
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